An early masterwork among American literary treatments of miscegenation, Chesnutt's story is of two young African Americans who decide to pass for white in order to claim their share of the American dream.
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Unlike the popular -Uncle Remus- stories of Joel Chandler Harris, Charles W. Chesnutt's tales probe psychological depths in black people unheard of before in Southern regional writing. They also expose the anguish of mixed-race men and women and the consequences of racial hatred, mob violence, and moral compromise. This important collection contains all the stories in his two published volumes, The Conjure Woman and The Wife of His Youth, along with two uncollected works: the tragic -Dave's Neckliss- and -Baxter's Procustes-, Chesnutt's parting shot at prejudice.
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Chesnutt writes of the black search for identity in the period between the Civil War and the turn of the century

First published in 1899, these folk tales within a tale provide commentary on the social attitudes of the period

Over the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the life and work of Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), considered by many the major African-American fiction writer before the Harlem Renaissance by virtue of the three novels and two collections of short stories he published between 1899 and 1905. Less familiar are the essays he wrote for American periodicals from 1899 through 1931, the majority of which are analyses of and protests against white racism. Collected as well in this volume are the addresses he made to both white and black audiences from 1881 through 1931, on topics...

This book collects the letters written between 1906 and 1932 by novelist and civil rights activist Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932). Between 1885 and 1905, this pioneer in the African-American literary tradition published three novels, two books of short stories, a biography of Frederick Douglass, and many short stories and essays in prestigious periodicals--at the same time managing a stenography and court reporting firm in Cleveland, Ohio. His works, which featured the experiences of African-Americans in the ante- and post-bellum period, received favorable reviews. But they did not find a...

The House Behind the Cedars, which many consider Charles Chesnutt's finest novel, tells of John and Lena Walden, mulatto siblings who pass for white in the postbellum American South. The drama that unfolds as they travel between black and white worlds constitutes a riveting portrait of the shifting and intractable nature of race in American life. This edition revitalizes a much-neglected masterpiece by one of our most important African-American writers. As Werner Sollors writes, -William Dean Howells did not overstate his case when he compared Chesnutt's works with those by...

Charles W. Chestnutt's Northern writings describe the ways in which America was reshaping itself at the turn of the 19th century. This collection of Chestnutt's Northern stories portray life in the North in the period between the Civil War and World War I.

Charles W. Chestnutt's Northern writings describe the ways in which America was reshaping itself at the turn of the 19th century. This collection of Chestnutt's Northern stories portray life in the North in the period between the Civil War and World War I.